Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo attacks Barack Obama's tenure as a "bizarro world presidency," saying his worldview is the reverse of what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
In an interview with the Daily Caller's Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – for whom Yoo once served as law clerk – the law professor at the University of California, Berkeley says Obama compromises the rule of law.
"I sometimes call the Obama presidency the 'bizarro world' presidency," Yoo says. "In Superman, there’s like, bizarro world, where everything is the reverse of the way it is in the real world.
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"Obama’s view of the presidency is the reverse or mirror image of the framers’ presidency. He wants the president to be weak abroad, he wants the country to pull back, and he wants the president to be the dominant power in domestic affairs."
"He doesn't have that authority" to say 'I don't like that law,'" Yoo adds, saying, for example, that's what in effect Obama has done with his executive action on immigration executive order.
"The reason the Obama administration is undermining the rule of law is because, think about it: we’re coming into a world where whether the law is applied to you or not is up to the president," he says.
"It’s by fiat or waiver whether you have to obey the law or not. So take immigration or health care or education and welfare laws. These are all laws that the executive branch is not applying as they were written by Congress and signed by a president. Instead the president is saying, 'Well, I’m going to apply these laws here and those laws there, and it’s because I feel like it — it’s not because I feel the same people should be treated in the same way.'"
Yoo, who served in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, also weighed in on his contentious relationship with the left over his authorship of the "torture memos" for the Bush administration that classified al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as outside of Geneva Convention protections against torture.
The memos outlined the Bush administration's legal strategy to use "advanced interrogation techniques,"
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"For most people, the only thing I’ve done since then has be on the Jon Stewart Show — where I 'cleaned up,' and it’s a good thing he’s retiring because he doesn’t want a rematch," Yoo says.
"Actually he said I was the only conservative guest who has ever beaten him. All these students of mine sent me the clip where he said that I had actually beaten him on the show…. The younger generation in school now, that’s all they know about me: 'Hey, I saw you on the Jon Stewart Show.'"
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